Monday, 16 May 2011

Disenchantment / Enchantment

I'm a little late to this party (or rather wake) but this analysis of the contemporary music industry by Stefan Goldmann is right on the money (or rather poverty). Goldmann is something of a modern-day Renaissance Man: house-techno producer, DJ, founder of the Macro label, executor of his late-father's (composer Friedrich Goldmann) estate, experimental producer, agent-provocateur, and overpaid consultant (as he reveals here), and given his attempts to disrupt the bland flow of formulaic 4/4 blagghh with things like syncopated locked groove LPs, synchronised cassette experiments and deconstructed classical edits, he's in a good position to comment.

It's a dreary world out there in music land, a ceaseless flood of dreary bilge, drowning consumers - and fellow producers - in blank data. Goldmann's comment below most perceptively (and cynically) highlight's this situation:

The total de-motivation doesn’t manifest itself only in the musicians’ under achievements, but also in the annoyance of everybody else. A frustrated DJ plays lame tunes in front of people bored to tears.

Goldmann then goes onto urge artists to experiment, leaving the safety of established roads for less-charted ones, but I'm more pessimistic than that. Very few are interested in taking up such a challenge, and even fewer can find success - in any sense - from experimentation. However, now is a fine time to celebrate some of Goldmann's efforts.

Here's his "breakthrough" release, "Sleepy Hollow" for Innervisions. Formulaic tech-house but as good as it gets and still riveting:

B-side "The Bribe" from 2007:

His proggy, operatic anthem "Art of Sorrow", big with Sven back in the day:

His divisive pan-flute remix of Santiago Salazar. I like it:

... And from his intriguing cassette experiment "Haven't I Seen You Before" (excerpt 1):